A few months ago I started an experiment, the Q IDE, a Qt-based IDE for R. I started it because I felt that the old RStudio was nice but I wanted it to be even simpler, closer to a scientific calculator like the old TI-89 Titanium.

While working on Q, I noticed that while the name is fine for geeks like me (e.g., think 007 or QR matrix decomposition), it can lead to more confusion for new R users.

Today we have Positron, VS Code, VSCodium, and a wide range of IDEs that in my opinion are a bit “oversized” for daily data analysis with R.

R GUI 2, named after the R GUI for Windows, is a multiplatform project that aims to make using R as simple as possible, integrating everything into a single Windows rather than multiple small windows and making it intentionally similar to Stata’s UI.

One of the reasons why I want to make this similar to Stata visuals is that I am doing a PhD in Economics, where Stata is predominant and it offers an amazingly simple UI despite that R has the same functions and more. People who are smarter than me tend to feel overwhelmed with R and I think the R GUI 2 can minimize that problem by giving a streamlined R experience.

If you would like to contribute to complete a good R GUI 2 v1.0, please comment here. My idea is to run a fully collaborative project and that will require multiple inputs from the R community, including testing, comments, and checking how it works on different computers. At the moment I can only say “it works on my computer”.

The R GUI currently looks like this.